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Thursday, 27 January 2011

NGP (PSP2) Specs Confirmed: A Brief Analysis

Yesterday a French site posted up likely specifications of Sony’s upcoming PSP2, which saw the inclusion of a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU and a IMG Tech SGX 543 MP4+ GPU inside the system. Today, Sony officially broke their silence on the device, revealing both the console itself, along with the final internal specifications of the unit.

We can safely put an end to multi-core CELL processor rumours, and word of a GPU to rival that of PS3’s RSX – the quad-core SGX 543 MP4+ is certainly powerful when used in tandem with four A9 CPU’s, but still pretty far away from delivering the same level of performance as the PS3 itself. Although, in a string of highly-impressive gameplay demonstrations, via video trailers, we can see that games on the system emulate PS3-level complexity with relative ease, and are way beyond the level of games shown running on the iPhone 4.

There’s no question that the NGP, as Sony are officially codenaming the system, is incredibly powerful for a handheld device. The SGX 543 features full Open GL 2.0 support, along with what looks like Pixel Shader Model 4.1 capabilities, allowing for potential cross compatibility with devices that share similar hardware, but also the capacity for current-gen, PS3 and 360 level of visual effects.

Less overall geometry and texture detail is a given, as is what looks like lower shadow quality on some of the titles shown, although, many of the demos use some PS3 level assets which helps in bridging the gap. And, on the small screen – one that packs a 960x544 16:9 OLED display – the differences are even less likely to be noticed.

In addition, while the use of a quad-core CPU may seem like overkill, various developers have stated, that a lack of overall processing power on the CPU-side is what’s holding back high-end iPhone titles. So, the NGP set-up of a quad-core GPU, and four CPU cores looks like a solid solution to that problem. The GPU definitely packs enough punch, from what we’ve seen so far. Plus, the use of tile-based, differed rendering of the PowerVR tech will provide an additional performance boost over traditional forward renderers; regardless of whether being coded for directly to metal, or by higher-level software API’s.

All in all, the NGP definitely looks like being at the very high-end of handheld tech… at least until 2011, by which time many smartphones are likely to have caught up. But despite this, ether way, Sony have clearly demonstrated that their next-generation portable is fully capable of delivering PS3-style graphics on the small screen. Like-for-like or not, that's certainly a pretty impressive talking point.

A fuller, more intricate analysis of the hardware will be performed at a later date. There’s still many aspects of the internals that we don’t know: the clock speed of the GPU, and the amount of VRAM/memory bandwidth, to name but three. But we’ll cover this, and other concerns, more thoroughly when we get a chance.

If PSP2 includes HDMI output, and able to hook up with sixaxis then it can be very well a microconsole :) - would be brilliant to connect to your monitor and have some fun :)

From the specs it is above what we have in the market or at least in one year time frame. But, mobile hw is developing very fast so in two years time psp2 will look like an ordinary hw. I think sony is putting a good strategy to introduce playstation-suit in order to enter the mobile handheld market. I think handheld game consoles are no longer for masses but hardcores.

I am really curious what OS they are going to use. Will it based on linux/android or old psp os. Sony moved to MiPS to ARMS so it is an interesting prospect.

I also think PSP2 can be pretty expensive for sony as it includes 5" OLED - probably one the most expensive element?

I'm also curious about the game storage media. The disk media is dead of course. Will sony introduce its proprietary standard of existing SD card for game storage? lot of thins left to be answered...

"Actually the GPU consists of four SGX 543 cores, which makes it a quad core GPU.The "MP4" in the name refers to that, as far as I know."

The article has been corrected. I was rather tired after a long day at work when I wrote it. Previous specs leak confirmed it was a quad-core GPU (the MP4 part was the identifier for me originally), but I simply forgot in the rush to get the piece out. Oppps :)

Although, both the iPad2 and iPhone 5 won't be using the same quad-core implementation of the chip.

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